


depth of field

by verity



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alpha Cora Hale, Brother-Sister Relationships, Family, Grief/Mourning, Homecoming, M/M, Pack Dynamics, Photography, Recovery, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-03
Updated: 2014-01-03
Packaged: 2018-01-07 06:25:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1116570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verity/pseuds/verity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles is the one who meets them at the IHOP just outside town. There are hollows under his eyes, and he looks thinner, bony at the wrists. "Welcome back," he says, sitting down across from Cora, feet knocking against Derek's under the table as he scoots his chair in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	depth of field

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whiskey_in_tea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskey_in_tea/gifts), [languisity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/languisity/gifts), [tiac](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiac/gifts).



> HAPPY BIRTHDAY TEA! HAPPY BIRTHDAY LANGUISITY!
> 
> Greatest thanks to tiac for giving me the prompt that started this off:  
>  _Patches of rust on an iron bridge, patches of blue knit into a favorite pink sweater. A big mouthful of tea, uncomfortably large, too hot to swallow. A cellphone screen glow that's the only light in a dark room._  
>  _A very light touch on the back on the neck. Butter and sugar creamed together, by hand with a fork, slowly. A fire sighted from far away._
> 
> And thanks also to Dira, Ashe, Scout, Clio, Luz, and languisity for their help and encouragement at various stages of bringing this into existence. You're the best!
> 
>  **content notes:** non-explicit mention of Stiles's mental health issues related to the presumed events of 3B, underage drinking

Juxtaposed with the vivid blue sky and the red punch of the lighthouse, the Hudson looks grim and murky where it passes beneath the George Washington Bridge. A few years ago, Laura went to a photography meetup out here and Derek tagged along, his point-and-shoot a sad counterpoint to her DSLR and bag full of lenses. They hiked up along the river from 155th St, Laura pausing to take shots of their shadows in the parking lot and the graffiti running the length of the pedestrian footbridge. Derek took closeups: flaking paint, patches of rust, the long row of metal curlicues holding up the chain link fence on top of the railing. Unlike Laura, he didn't have anywhere to show them, anyone to show them to.

Cora sidles up next to him at the rails that separate them from the riverbank. "Hey," she says, bumping her shoulder against his. "Long time no see."

"How was alpha camp?" he says.

She snorts. "Like sleepaway camp, just turn the bitch volume up a notch."

The river in front of them is muddy, quick. Derek watches it idly for a few more minutes before he says, "Where to, alpha?"

"If you call me that again, I'll punch you," Cora says.

—

Home is a creaky, tiny apartment off the Montrose L stop that Derek used to share with Laura and now has all to himself. He tried to clear out her room for Cora and got as far as opening the door and closing it again.

"You have a lot of vegetables," Cora says as she surveys the fridge.

"I went to the farmer's market," Derek says.

Cora holds up a bundle of rainbow chard. "Is this genetically engineered?"

"It's _organic_ ," Derek says.

They have steak and chard and cornbread for dinner, eaten off the chipped plates that Laura thrifted when they first moved here, before she knew how much money they'd have coming in from the estate. Cora's shorter than Laura, more muscled, her movements more deliberate. It's impossible not to compare them. Derek can hardly remember them together, Laura at nineteen and Cora at eleven, oldest and youngest.

Halfway through her steak, Cora sits down her fork and knife. "So, I got my GED while I was upstate."

"That's good," Derek says neutrally.

"And I'm registered for classes for this fall," she says. "At Beacon Hills Community College."

Derek sits his fork down, too. He feels like—"You want us to go back?"

Laura would have said, _We're going back_ , and that would have been the end of it. Cora says, "I do. It doesn't have to be forever, but if we don't return soon, we'll have to forfeit the territory to Scott."

Traditionally, a pack gets seven years grace after a major loss to solidify their claim. The seventh anniversary of the fire is next month. "Oh," Derek says. "I thought we'd—"

"Hey," Cora says. "Sleep on it. If you don't want to go, we won't go."

"That's—that's not usually how this works," Derek says after a moment.

Cora spears some greens with her fork. "I just spent four months taking leadership workshops," she says. "I don't know what you thought was going to happen."

—

Derek quits his bartending gigs, both of them. He's been killing time, working nonstop, picking up guys and girls from Williamsburg bars: anyone who doesn't look like her, or her, or her. Even with his days freed up, it takes them a week to pack up Laura's bedroom. Cora goes through her clothes, puts most of them aside to donate. They barely smell like her anymore. Cora takes a few shirts, a worn hoodie; Derek keeps Laura's favorite sweater.

The only other thing he takes is her camera.

"You don't want her photos?" Cora eyes all the ones in frames, the external hard drive labeled _pics_ —Laura always shot in RAW and needed extra room. "I'm not getting rid of them, but—"

Derek pops out the SD card and hands it over. "Just the camera." Somewhere along the way, he lost his old point-and-shoot; he doesn't have a camera of his own anymore.

He buys a few new SD cards, digs up Laura's Adobe software, and reads some tutorials on the internet before they leave, the back of their car stuffed with boxes and the space beneath Derek's legs up front filled with junk food. His first photo is in the parking lot of a McDonald's in Pennsylvania, a blurry shot of his sneakers. He gets them in focus in the second one, narrows the aperture until the gravel, his shoes, the grain of his jeans are all sharply defined.

"I don't know why you're taking Instagram shots you can't put on Instagram," Cora says, peering over his shoulder.

"Shut up," Derek says comfortably.

—

Derek has a shiny new laptop that he purchased from the Apple store while Cora was gone. He connects the camera so he can open the photos in Lightroom. They're not great, but they're not terrible.

"Let me see," Cora says, and he moves aside so she can climb up beside him on the hotel bed. "You should print them out so we can put them on the refrigerator."

"There's only a mini-fridge in the loft," Derek says.

Cora sighs. "Yeah, about that—"

Derek falls asleep watching Cora check her email on her phone, face illuminated by the backlit screen, her dark hair sharp against the white pillowcase until the contrast fades into shadow.

—

The drive takes 42 hours. Cora splits that into six days, long shifts for the first five so they can have a leisurely entrance to Beacon Hills on the last. Derek takes photos of his shoes in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Utah. He photographs other things, too—trees, terrible diner coffee in an assortment of mugs, Cora with her head bent over the map on her phone—but it's mostly his feet, the same pair of black-on-black Chucks.

Cora does most of the driving. "I don't mind," she says when Derek asks. "I did a lot of it when I was younger."

"You're 18," he points out.

"I have a pretty convincing fake license," Cora says with her hands at ten and two on the steering wheel. "Class F."

When he came out to Beacon Hills last year—impossible to believe it's been a year—he flew into Sacramento, took the bus up to Beacon Hills, a cab to the house. He found the Camaro locked and empty in the woods. Laura bought it for the trip. "Time for me to see the world," she said. "We didn't—we missed it coming out here."

"I don't think you should go alone," Derek said. "I could—"

"I am," she said. That was the last thing she said to Derek, too, calling from her motel room two weeks later. "Yeah, I'm glad I came out here. I am."

Derek's only ever lived on the coasts, California and New York. The middle of the country stretches out, endless and flat, and in Nebraska, with a slice of blueberry pie on his plate, he's glad, too, to see it. To measure that distance with Cora beside him, singing along to Led Zepplin in her slightly off-key alto.

—

Stiles is the one who meets them at the IHOP just outside town. There are hollows under his eyes, and he looks thinner, bony at the wrists. "Welcome back," he says, sitting down across from Cora, feet knocking against Derek's under the table as he scoots his chair in. "I've got the keys to your place. I warded it, Allison dropped off some food—"

Cora raises an eyebrow. "Allison?"

"Allison," Stiles says. "Lydia and Isaac handled the furniture stuff."

"You got us an apartment?" Derek says.

"They're our allies, dickwad," Cora says. "Also, I sent them a bunch of money and told them to have fun. Is there a pool in the building?"

Stiles yawns and scrubs at his face with his hands. "There's one in the courtyard and in-building gym and laundry. Can I get pancakes?"

"You can get pancakes," Cora says beneficently.

Stiles orders chocolate chip pancakes, loads them down with lingonberry syrup, and eats half before he pushes his plate over to Derek. "Here, finish for me." For the first time, he looks directly at Derek. "It's good to see you, dude."

Derek takes a gulp of his too-hot tea and his tongue burns. When he swallows, he feels it the whole way down. "Thanks. I, um—you, too."

In the car, Cora says, "Stiles looks bad. Scott said—this is better, than it has been."

Derek tilts his head back against the headrest and closes his eyes.

Cora puts her hand on his shoulder. "We can still turn around. We're not—"

"I need to do laundry," Derek says. "I'm out of clean underwear."

"Yeah, okay," Cora says. "Fair enough."

—

The laundry room in their new apartment complex doesn't take quarters, just a slim white card Derek has to load up with money at a machine. Derek sorts whites and darks and colors before he puts their laundry in to wash and sits in the plastic lawn chair by the folding table with a book. The steady rumble of the machines is soothing. Laura used to make fun of him for liking the laundromat; Cora gave him a pillowcase with her bras and said, "Don't put them in the dryer."

Laura adored old things, the crumbling vinyl tile on their kitchen floor and vintage clothes and even the subway system, filthy and stinking of shit and piss. "The subway smells like people have been there," she said whenever Derek complained. "I like it." The last Christmas they spent together, they took the old holiday trains running on the M from Queens Plaza to 2nd Avenue and back three times, Derek dozing on Laura's shoulder by the last leg.

The apartment complex still smells like fresh paint and newly carpeted hallways, has electronic key cards they tap to get into the building. Derek and Cora are in #313, which has three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and central air.

"Three?" Derek says.

"In case we need another," Cora says, hanging her keys on one of the hooks by the door. "Text me if you're bringing anybody home and don't get blood on the carpet. I want the security deposit back."

Derek's room has a double bed, a bookshelf, and a desk. The bed has a soft black comforter and, beneath that, Batman sheets. He drops down onto the bed and laughs until Cora comes to check in on him.

—

Derek gets a job doing deliveries for a local bakery, so he's up every day at 5AM and in bed by 9PM. He starts to dream about driving and bread and flour, wakes up panicked at 5.30 on his days off. Unlike bartending, no one tries to touch him, fuck with him, take him home; instead, he's constantly offered free coffee. Cora's classes don't start for a few more months, so she's at loose ends, taking care of stuff with the estate. Derek signs off on all the paperwork she sticks in front of him. It's a relief, a release. He was a terrible alpha.

—

Cora texts him one morning, _Allison here._ When Derek gets home from work, she's in their living room, sitting on the couch with Cora; they have open bottles of beer.

When Derek opens his mouth, what comes out is, "Aren't you underage?"

"Fuck you," Allison says amiably, taking another pull on her Corona.

"Yeah, don't," Cora puts her feet up on the coffee table, crossing her legs at the ankle. "That doesn't work for you, dude."

"I'll just—" Derek says. "I'll—"

In the car, Derek leans his forehead against the steering wheel for a moment. He doesn't know where to go. Normally, he sticks to work and the library and works out in the apartment complex's gym. Beacon Hills is bearable by this sleight of hand: in daylight, in public, Derek is all man and no wolf. He passes through the mundane world undetected, and there's nothing he has to do every day but show up.

Someone knocks on his window and Derek jerks upright.

Stiles mimes rolling the window down. Derek opens the door instead, watches with satisfaction as Stiles stumbles back. "Hey!"

"I'm fine," Derek says.

"Yeah, I didn't ask," Stiles says, rubbing his thigh. "Is Allison okay?"

Derek opens the door a little wider. "What, you think Cora would—"

"We were supposed to meet up to work on our AP Gov project and she's not answering her phone." Stiles crosses his arms. He looks tired, washed out in the sunlight along with his faded flannel and denim. "I just—I got worried. She's—there's nothing wrong, right?"

"She's fine," Derek says. "Are you?"

Stiles laughs and turns away, walks slowly back to his Jeep.

—

Laura's camera sits on the desk for a few months before Derek picks it up again and takes a hike through the preserve. He's been out on full moons with Cora—Scott's pack keeps to the other side, closer to where the house was before the county razed it—but not in the daytime. The preserve is loud with the chatter of wildlife and bright with the sun. Derek takes a handful of pictures: the blue sky framed between the branches overhead, light drifting over a fallen log, his shoes shading into the dark cover of the forest floor.

Derek drives into town afterward to pick up some paper towels and Arizona iced tea for Cora, who drinks that stuff by the gallon. He runs into Scott in the soda aisle, hefting cases of Diet Coke into his cart. "Hey," Scott says casually as his bicep flexes with the effort of lifting another 24 cans of soda into the air. "Long time no see, man."

"Hey." There's a weird, distant ache in Derek's gut. Scott is still short, floppy-haired, and there are Spongebob Squarepants boxers creeping up out of the waistband of his jeans. He looks like a kid, but Derek's the one whose eyes lower in submission to the boxes of Capri Sun on the bottom of Scott's cart, to his sneaker-clad feet. "I—yeah."

"Come over Sunday," Scott says. "You and Cora, I've been trying to—we have dinner at our house on Sundays. It'd be nice to have you."

"Not weird?" Derek says.

Scott shrugs and picks up another case of Diet Coke.

—

Cora puts up a token protest, but she caves as soon as Derek says, "I want to."

"Finally, God," she says, fingers tapping on the screen of her phone. Texting Scott an RSVP, probably. "Something you want to do."

"Am I not—" Derek glances up from the stove, where he's mixing the Velveeta with the strained macaroni in the pot. "Is there something you need me to do?"

Cora looks at him for a long moment. "Is that what you think this is like?" she says. "That all I want from you is—"

"Laura always—" Derek starts. Stops.

"Yeah, I've been wondering about what the fuck Laura did," Cora says. "She just let you fuck off for years? Skip out on, like, school? Life?"

Derek takes a deep breath. He stares down at the melting Velveeta. "I was—I was really screwed up, okay, and she—we didn't—"

"Yeah, I know about your little girlfriend you killed, and the one who killed our family, and, oh yeah, the other one who just tried to murder us all again. Peter filled me in," Cora says. "That doesn't mean you get a break from learning how to function. I'm not going to spank you if you don't clean your room, I'm your alpha, not your mom."

"Our mom," Derek says, standing straighter.

Cora's eyes flash red and Derek can't help but duck, get closer to the floor as she steps into the kitchen and drives him into the corner. She goes down with him, though, onto her knees, puts out a hand to cup the back of his neck and pull him toward her until their foreheads almost touch. "I survived without both of you for six years," she says. "When I thought that Laura—I came home. I wanted to be with her. I wanted—you're my _family_."

Derek closes his eyes. "You didn't want me as your alpha."

"You sucked," Cora says. "I didn't want to be your alpha, either."

"You are, though," Derek says. "You're great, you're—"

Cora strokes the back of his neck with her thumb, gentle, barely touching. "I'm not Mom."

—

Things are still awkward when they show up at the McCall house for Sunday dinner. Derek bakes a cake from a box. Cora brings a bottle of Patron. "It's for Mrs. McCall," she says when Derek gives her a serious side-eye. "A little fairy told me she needs it."

Mrs. McCall doesn't bat an eye when Cora hands her the tequila. "Did a little fairy tell you I got a Margaritaville blender for Christmas?"

"No," Cora lies, smiling.

Everyone's crammed in around the dining room table: Derek hasn't seen them all in a room like this, ever, the kids and their parents. Mrs. McCall—"Call me Melissa, Cora."—is sitting between Scott and Isaac opposite Sheriff Stilinski and Stiles, with Lydia and Allison crowded between Isaac and the sheriff like a buffer. Cora takes the seat next to Melissa and Derek drops down next to Stiles, who squirms in his chair and doesn't look Derek in the eye.

The food is already on the table, spaghetti and meatballs and assortment of side dishes; the Patron has disappeared. Derek accepts one bowl after another as they're passed around, then lets everyone else talk while he twirls noodles around his fork. Cora and Melissa discuss the change in high school zoning that's going to affect property values in the neighborhood next year—how does Cora know about that shit?—while the sheriff asks about Lydia's college plans; Allison and Isaac pester Scott with questions about their joint English project and pointedly avoid eye contact with Derek.

Stiles, next to Derek, says nothing, just picks at the food on his plate. Sometimes his dad or Scott try to draw him into conversation, but he just shakes his head and jabs at the churned mess of meatball on his plate a little harder. When everyone starts to get up from the table—"Recess before dessert," Scott announces as Isaac and the Sheriff start to gather up plates—Stiles tugs at Derek's sleeve and shoots at pointed glance at the exit.

—

High summer is upon them, so it's still light outside when Derek and Stiles step out onto the front porch. Stiles grabs Derek by the forearm, the span of his long fingers like a brand, and tugs Derek around the side of the house and through the gate to the back. "Come on," Stiles says. "I can't—normally I don't stay this long."

"Aren't you Scott's emissary?" Derek says.

Stiles shakes his head. "Maybe, someday, if I—" He falls quiet again as they duck behind one of the trees in the back, almost broad enough to hide them from the house. They're far enough from it that their voices won't carry, even to werewolf ears. "Do you know what happened? With the nemeton?"

Derek nods. "It messed with you and Scott and Allison's heads, then Lydia killed Peter, and it stopped." It sounds stupid when he says it aloud, so emotionless and simple. He can't think about Peter, about his claws in Peter's throat, about Lydia's slender hands that he just saw cupped around a tureen of creamed spinach.

"The nemeton made me see stuff that wasn't there," Stiles says. "People—I thought things happened that didn't. I went to the hospital for a while because Mrs. McCall and my dad thought it would help." He sighs, closing his eyes for a moment. "I got out right before you came back."

Derek glances at Stiles. He's gained back some weight, but the shadows under his eyes still look like bruises. "Did it help?"

Stiles rolls his eyes. "What do you think?"

They stand out there for a while. Derek counts the cars that go by on the road, listens to the indistinct rumble of movement in the backyards that abut Scott's. A squirrel runs along the back fence.

"Hey." Stiles fists a hand in Derek's shirt and tugs. "I want to try something."

"What," Derek says, but he already knows, can see it coming in Stiles's face, the hopeful, scared, determined expression that hits Derek right behind the ribs. He goes with the motion and presses Stiles back into the tree as Stiles kisses him, half-misses, gets Derek on the corner of his mouth. It's touch-and-go for a moment until they get their mouths lined up, and then it's rushed and hot and perfect, and Derek _wants_. He's half hard just from this, his hands on Stiles's shoulders, Stiles pushing his own up beneath Derek's shirt as they kiss, scoring his back. Everything aside from Stiles recedes from focus, like Derek's gone down an f-stop on his camera: he stares at the sharp curve of Stiles's cheekbone when they come up for air before he can meet Stiles's eyes.

"Let's get out of here," Stiles says.

—

They cruise around town for an hour in Stiles's Jeep, the noise of the road and the engine loud enough that even Derek can barely hear the radio. Something in his body loosens, unknots. He has to be at work in the morning, but he says, "Do you want to go back to my place?"

"I'm not going to fuck you," Stiles says.

"That's not what I asked," Derek says.

He texts Cora, _Stiles is coming over_. She texts back, _??_ and then _u do u scott has drinks bbl8_ , whatever that means.

Stiles texts someone before they get out of the car. He's jittery now, nervous, the certainty from earlier wavering. "This is my favorite hoodie," he says, glancing over his shoulder and tugging it up to get a better look at the tree sap smeared all down the back. "If it's ruined, I'm gonna be pissed."

The hoodie gets discarded on Derek's floor as they get into bed, stripped down to boxers and shirts. Nothing goes any further than making out, which gets slow and lazy fast. Derek has tricked his body into routine, into slumber, and Stiles is wilting, too. Derek falls asleep with Stiles half on top of him, already out, breathing hot against Derek's cheek.

—

In the morning when Derek's alarm goes off, Stiles is still there. The alarm barely wakes him, and he only sighs when Derek touches his arm, so Derek leaves a post-it on the pillow next to his cheek: GONE TO WORK.

—

When Derek gets back from work, Cora's out, but Stiles is still in his bed, drooling onto the post-it. He doesn't rouse when Derek says his name, lightly shakes him. Derek goes out into the hall and dials a number he hasn't used in the better part of a year. "Hey," Scott says. "What's wrong? Are you—"

"Stiles won't wake up," Derek whispers loudly, like that's going to be the thing to disturb him. "He's been sleeping for 19 hours."

There is a long pause. "I'll call his dad," Scott says. "You should—he doesn't sleep, sometimes? And then he crashes. Can he stay there? Are you okay with that? I mean—"

"It's the least I can do," Derek says before he can think about it.

"Take care of him," Scott says. "I trust you."

—

Stiles is still sleeping two hours later. Cora peers through Derek's doorway and sighs. "You could have put him to bed in the guest room, you didn't have to—" Derek clears his throat; she looks at him and raises her eyebrows. "Oh. Okay."

Cora brought home KFC with her, so they eat drumsticks and mashed potatoes in the living room and try not to get gravy all over everything. "This going to be a thing?"

"I don't know," Derek says. "I—"

"Yeah, whatever, fine," she says, waving away his protests. "Eat your dinner, I don't care."

—

Derek wakes up when Stiles does at 2AM. "Gotta pee, I'm sorry, I—shit," he says. "I'll—"

"Come back when you're done," Derek says.

He's barely awake when Stiles slides beneath the covers again. "Did you leave me a toothbrush?" he says. "There was definitely a toothbrush. I didn't realize this was, like, a full-service joint."

"It's whatever you want," Derek mumbles, pulling Stiles toward him. It's stupid, he knows it's stupid, but he wants to take care of Stiles, press him into this bed and keep him until he's the Stiles that Derek remembers again. He liked that Stiles, relied on him, he trusted him; the way he feels about the Stiles in his bed is more complicated. For example, Derek wants to fix him, but maybe not the part where Stiles feels like putting his hand on Derek's thigh, half a centimeter from Derek's dick.

"I want to jerk you off," Stiles says. "You want to jerk me off? Two-for-one deal."

"Yeah," Derek says. "Okay."

—

Stiles goes home in the morning. Derek doesn't see him for a week, during which he drinks a lot of coffee, loads and unloads trays of bread, delicate tarts, cookies, and comes home at night to sleep dreamlessly. He doesn't change his sheets.

He finally runs into Stiles in the library, his brown head bent over a book next to Lydia's copper one. Lydia's the first to lift her head, narrowing her eyes. "Derek. What brings you here today?"

Derek holds up the latest _McSweeney's_ and the collected plays of Chekhov.

"It's not a test," Stiles says, looking up from beneath his long lashes, even as Lydia drapes a protective arm across the back of his chair. "Are you busy later?"

"No," Derek says. "You want to—"

Lydia leans forward and gives Derek a wide smile that bares her teeth as well as a terrifying view of her cleavage.

"Hey." Stiles turns toward her. "It's okay. Derek's—he's okay."

Lydia doesn't take her eyes off Derek. "If you're sure," she says doubtfully. Derek can feel her eyes burning on him the whole walk to the checkout desk.

—

He goes to the mall the next weekend with a long cardboard tube under his arm and Laura's camera slung around his neck. The frame shop there has decent reviews on Yelp, and what Derek wants is simple enough, just to get these matted and framed, three 12" x 18" and six 4" x 6" prints. The guy at the counter tells him to come back in a week. Derek gets buns from Cinnabon before he heads home, one for him and one for Cora.

"Sorry, I ran out of laundry," Cora says when Derek shoulders open the door, keys in one hand and bag in the other. "I hope you don't—" She's wearing Laura's favorite sweater, the pink one with the blue patches at the elbows and blue embroidery around the neck. It's girly, not Cora's color, and even with the immense weirdness of seeing her on the couch flipping through an issue of _People_ that Allison left here last week, Derek could never confuse her with Laura.

Derek sits the bag of cinnamon buns on the coffee table. "I come bearing tribute, alpha," he says, and waits for her to tackle him.

—

Stiles helps him hang up the photos while Cora is at her night class. Derek puts two of the big ones over the couch, Cora stabbing a fork in her hashbrowns in Ohio juxtaposed with a portrait of Laura's breakfast in New York. Laura is half-reflected in the squat mug of coffee next to her Eggos, a halo of hair around her camera. Derek can still see her face if he closes his eyes, the expression she made as she looked up from her camera to him across the table.

On the empty wall in the foyer, he hangs one of the photos from that walk along the Hudson, Laura's snap of their shadows stretching long across asphalt and fallen leaves. Around it, Derek places six shots of his feet: Stroudsberg, Toledo, La Porte, Des Moines, Kearney, the dark ground cover of the preserve. There was something about this that Laura liked, too—making a record of her movement through the world.

Derek does the hammering and nailing, Stiles uses a ruler and the level app on his phone to get everything straight and even. "You should put the shoe rack under here, work with the theme," Stiles says. He steps back and slides his phone into his back pocket. "It looks good."

On the gray plane of the parking lot, Derek's shadow is small next to Laura's—he was standing behind her, taking photos of the water beyond. Her shadow reaches from tip to toe, edge to edge. "Could be worse," he says.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [ladyofthelog](http://ladyofthelog.tumblr.com) on tumblr.
> 
> You can see some of the NYC photos that are described in this fic in [this tumblr post](http://ladyofthelog.tumblr.com/post/74461090616/at-the-beginning-of-depth-of-field-the-fic-i).


End file.
